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Difficult conversations

Tools for the conversations you dread: saying the unsaid, setting a boundary, repairing, and listening so the other person actually feels heard.

  1. 1 · Exercise
    Say it without accusing
    Turn something hard you need to say from accusation into an I-message — and decide when you will say it.
    10 min · Social · Discipline
  2. 2 · Exercise
    Repair after an argument
    An argument that keeps nagging at you: take your part and make a small attempt at repair.
    10 min · Social · Compassion
  3. 3 · Exercise
    The unsaid
    Something you have wanted to say to someone has been left lying around. Here you unpack it, carefully.
    10 min · Social · Compassion
  4. 4 · Exercise
    Say no with respect
    See what makes no hard, practice a short and friendly no without an apology, and have the wording ready before you need it.
    10 min · Occupational · Discipline
  5. 5 · Exercise
    Active listening
    Practice simply listening, with no advice and no stories of your own, and let the silence be. It strengthens the feeling of being understood.
    12 min · Social · Compassion
  6. 6 · Exercise
    Ground rules for arguing
    Couples and friends who stay together argue too — but by rules. Set yours before the next round.
    12 min · Social · Discipline
  7. 7 · Tool
    The temperature check
    Five minutes a day that keeps a relationship up to date, before small things have had time to become big ones.
    8 min · Social · Compassion
  8. 8 · Exercise
    Meeting someone else's anger
    When someone is boiling over, neither logic nor counterattack helps. What helps is less exciting, and it works.
    10 min · Social · Compassion
  9. 9 · Article
    Four habits that predict a separation
    Researchers who have studied thousands of couples can, with uncanny accuracy, tell which ones last. What they look at is four habits, and a fifth that rescues.
    2 min läsning · Social · Rationality

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